Your host

I’m Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. More about me.

Search

Read the archives in dead-tree format! Many of these articles have been collected into four books, available at your favorite bookstore. It’s an excellent way to read the site in the bath, or throw it at your boss.

Careers

Need a better career? We’re bringing together the best software developers with the best companies on the Joel on Software / Stack Overflow Job Board. You can search job listings or even file a CV and let employers find you.

Want to hire a smart programmer who gets things done? The best ones are at Stack Overflow Careers. Info for employers.

We make FogBugz, a bug tracking system that actually works and can be used to manage everything your development team does, from bug tracking to customer email to feature management to project scheduling and more. Try FogBugz now.

Twitter! Twitter!

2000/12/02

Until yesterday, the FogBUGZ license said that you couldn’t reverse engineer the program, attempt to look at the source code, or modify it in any way. Various honest people have asked how much we charge for a source license, so that they could customize a few things.

Hmmm. Why does the license say you can’t change the source code? I couldn’t think of a single reason. In fact I thought of a lot of counter-reasons, and immediately changed the license agreement. So now you’re going to have to sit through one of those old-fuddy-duddy stories from my past.